Vibration devices are used in a wide range of applications including haptic displays, haptic interfaces, force feedback devices, vibratory feeders, beauty products, personal hygiene products, personal pleasure products, personal massagers, tree harvesters, and seismic vibrators. Some widely used products that include haptic displays include the DUALSHOCK® 3 wireless controller for Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation® 3; the PlayStation® Move motion controller for motion gaming with Sony Computer Entertanment's PlayStation® 3; Microsoft Corporation's Xbox 360 Wireless Speed Wheel; and the Wii Remote™ Plus controller which is used for motion gaming with the Nintendo Wii.
Vibration actuators are typiclaly the smalles and lowest cost method for generating haptic sensations. Therefore, it is advantageous to use vibration actuators to create a wide range of haptic sensations. Common low cost vibration actuators include Eccentric Rotating Mass actuators (ERMs) and Linear Resonant Actuators (LRAs). One of the advantages of both ERMs and LRAs is that they can generate relatively large vibration forces from low power input. Both ERMs and LRAs generally build up kinetic energy during their ramp-up period; an ERM does this as the velocity of its rotating mass increases, and an LRA does this as the amplitude of vibration of its moving mass increases. These low cost actuators are used in many applications, including in consumer electronics products such as smartphones and videogame controllers.
Many smartphones today use either a single ERM or a single LRA to produce alerts by vibrating the entire device. This has the advantage that the vibration alert can be felt while the device is inside a person's pocket. Game controllers (also commonly termed interchangeably as “videogame controllers” or simply “cotrollers”) often incorporate two ERMs within a two-handed device such as the Xbox 360 Wireless Controller or the Xbox 360 Wireless Speed Wheel (both devices from Microsoft). Sometimes such dual-ERM controllers are configured with one ERM having a large rotating mass and the other ERM having a small rotating mass. A single-handed controller such as the Wii Remote™ Plus (from Nintendo) will typically have a single ERM to provide vibration feedback to the user.
A common limitation of most existing vibration devices is the inability to define the directionality of the vibratory forces. ERM actuators generate centripetal forces that rotate in a plane, and generally the direction of vibration (that is to say, the instantaneous direction of the rotating centripetal force vector) cannot be not sensed in haptic applications due in part to the high rate of change of the direction of vibrations. In an ERM a centripetal force is applied onto the eccentric mass by the motor shaft, and an equal and opposite centrifugal force is applied onto the motor shaft. In this document both the terms centripetal and centrifugal are used with the understanding that these are equal but opposite forces. LRAs vibrate back and forth, and thus it may be possible to sense the axis of vibration, but it is not possible to provide more of a sensation in the forward direction relative to the backward direction or vice versa. Since haptic applications are often integrated with audio and video displays such as in computer gaming where directions are an integral component of the game, it is desirable to provide a haptic sensation that also corresponds to a direction. Moreover, it is be useful to generate haptic cues of directionality for applications where a person does not have visual cues, such as to guide a vision-impaired person. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a human-perceptible indication of directionality in vibratory haptic displays and interfaces. In addition, it is advantageous to use vibration actuators to generate a wide range of vibration waveforms including both directional and non-directional waveforms.
There have been some haptic vibration devices that provide a sensation of vibration direction, but these prior implementations have disadvantages. Specifically, asymmetric vibrations have been used to generate a haptic sensation that is larger in one direction than the opposite direction.
However, existing asymmetric vibrators are complex, costly, or have limited controllability. They tend to be bulky and have low power efficiency. Tappeiner et. al. demonstrated a vibration device that generated asymmetric directional haptic cues (Tappeiner, H. W.; Klatzky, R. L.; Unger, B.; Hollis, R.; “Good vibrations: Asymmetric vibrations for directional haptic cues”, World Haptics 2009, Third Joint Euro Haptics Conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environments and Teleoperator Systems), yet this device uses a high power and an expensive 6-DOF magnetic levitation haptic device. Amemiya et. al. (Tomohiro Amemiya; Hideyuki Ando; Taro Maeda; “Kinesthetic Illusion of Being Pulled Sensation Enables Haptic Navigation for Broad Social Applications, Ch.21, Advances in Haptics, pp.403-141”) illustrated a device that also generates asymmetric vibrations for haptic applications, yet this device uses a complex and large linkage system with 6 links and it appears that the direction of vibration cannot be modified in real-time.
Another limitation of vibration devices that use ERMs is that the amplitude of vibration is dependent on the frequency of vibration, since the vibration forces are generated from centripetal acceleration of an eccentric mass. Some prior approaches have used multiple ERMs to control frequency and amplitude independently, but in the process also generate undesirable torque effects due to the offset between the ERMs.